


bittersweet and strange (certain as the sun)

by Metronomeblue



Series: the world is fierce (but we are fiercer) [1]
Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Vampire, And none for Nucky bye - Freeform, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood Drinking, Blood and Violence, Broken Promises, Charlie is a Summer fae, Crossroads Deals & Demons, Everyone Has Issues, Fae & Fairies, Fluff and Angst, Gangsters, Gen, Juxtaposition of Sex and Violence, M/M, Masseria is A Bad Bad Man, Meyer is a vampire, Meyer-centric, Nucky dies? Kind of? it's vague, Partner Betrayal, Period-Typical Racism, Purple Prose, Seasonal Rivalries, Self-Esteem Issues, Sleeping Together, Slice of Life, The Couple That Slays Together Stays Together, Tragic Romance, Trust Issues, as much fluff as there can be anyway, kind of, meyer and charlie are smitten idiots, obviously, of a sort, only fae instead of demons, there are honestly maybe three people who actually do anything outside of Meyer and Charlie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 06:52:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11663871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metronomeblue/pseuds/Metronomeblue
Summary: Supernatural/Fantasy AU: Meyer, a vampire, and Charlie, a Fae from the Summer Court, meet. Tragedy and joy follow, one after the other.//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////"Charlie is languorous, white flower perfume twisting around you with a murmur of persuasion and a flash of white teeth. He reclines, sprawls, invites, and drawls out some nonsense in that liquid tone that exudes dare and game and the Fae don't play games for harmless prizes. Meyer shivers, like full winter has crept down his spine and stayed there.It should have been his first clue that Charlie wasn't just dangerous. Charlie was dangerous to him."





	bittersweet and strange (certain as the sun)

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. NO I AM NOT OVER BEAUTY AND THE BEAST LYRICS. I WILL NEVER BE.
> 
> 2\. this is... something I'm actually proud of.
> 
> 3\. Listen. i just. I feel so much about Meyer and Charlie. So. So much.

Meyer Lansky is turned in the dead of winter in 1821.

He goes out one night to hunt, in the time between the moon setting and the sun rising, when the darkness of winter still cloaks the earth.

He is declared missing, and searched for, with hope at first, then despair.

His body is not found.

There is no body to find.

* * *

He meets AR ninety years later, and it still rankles him twelve years after how people defer to him and not Meyer. They scrape and bow and sweep away the waves for AR, like the Red Sea parting. People expect Meyer to do the same for them- they are never pleased with his response.

People assume Meyer is an errand boy. Some assistant to AR’s evil, or a trainee on the tail of a hired killer, perhaps an undercover cop.

People assume Meyer is good, or if not good, then at least not dangerous.

Meyer is the most dangerous man in the room.

In every room. 

* * *

Time passes slow when you’re as deliberate and cold as Meyer is.

* * *

There's something heavy about summer. Something constricting and overwhelming, like being strangled by flowers. The heat presses down, like so much sunshine sitting on his shoulders. Meyer hates it. Summer has never been his favorite season. It's soft and unrefined, swelling and exuberant, and it doesn't suit him. He wears it unfavorably, sweat welling up between his skin and the silk of his shirt, tar-black leather shoes heating uncom.  fortably under the unforgiving sun.

He is all winter, Meyer is. Always has been. He is elegant pressed silk and slick coats, wool hats and business-like work shoes. The crush of fresh snow and the bite of ice wind. Control, precision, violence, raw power tamed and collared. He's unfriendly, perhaps, or too friendly. 

Vampires do not befriend their dessert, however polite or intriguing.

Charlie is only the last.

* * *

He thinks at first that he dislikes Charlie. His name isn't Charlie, either, and that's the first thing the dark-haired man says that twigs Meyer that there's something deeply  _ wrong _ with him. But names have power, names are control and service and cold, biting chains at wrists and neck, so Meyer can accept that. It's when Charlie smiles and tells him he's never met a vampire that Meyer begins to think maybe the twinge in his stomach is no longer anger-it's attraction.

But he's not certain of that. He's never certain of anything with Charlie. He's shifting ground, uncertain and reckless. Impulsive. Charlie is treacherous and strange, and Meyer doesn't trust him as far as he can spit.

Meyer cannot spit very far.

Meyer is stiff, uncompromising. He knows this about himself, and can occasionally be persuaded to be sheepish about it, when Benny is feeling particularly rebellious or AR is in a more difficult snit than usual. Not often. He is cold, and hard, as if he was carved of ice and stone. He was flesh and bone once, and he might be again, if he could be persuaded. Killed in winter, died in spring, they used to say, but Meyer never listened. He should have, but it's been hundreds of years since then, and the ice hasn't left him. He's grown used to the winter, the season of his end and his afterlife. Cold wind trails him and blood runs thicker when he's near. Winter and fear and the clink of coins. The rush of blood that doesn't belong to him.  These things bleed through his small, man-shaped shell until it might as well not be there. Meyer is naked predatory instinct and merciless arithmetic. He measures. He weighs. He reaps.

He is what he is, and no less. 

Charlie isn't afraid of him, maybe. That might be what irritates him. But Charlie is no less lethal, no less strange. He is a hunter, too.

Charlie is languorous, white flower perfume twisting around you with a murmur of persuasion and a flash of white teeth. He reclines, sprawls,  _ invites _ , and drawls out some nonsense in that liquid tone that exudes  _ dare _ and  _ game _ and the Fae don't play games for harmless prizes. Meyer shivers, like full winter has crept down his spine and stayed there. 

It should have been his first clue that Charlie wasn't just dangerous. Charlie was dangerous _to_ _him_.

* * *

He first meets Charlie in the late morning on July fifth, when the sun has crested the trees and is blazing intensely through AR’s front windows like it has something personal against him. There's a man with dark hair in a rumpled grey suit splayed suggestively over AR’s couch like he'd fallen asleep halfway through undoing his tie. And his coat. And his shirt. One arm thrown over his eyes stops Meyer from really seeing him, but he smells the heady perfume of Fae and hears the hummingbird hum of a fairy’s heart, so he has something of an idea of what he is, if not who. His own heart speeds up in response.

“Mister Luciano?” He asks, trying his best to sound friendly and not like he's already on edge with his nerves keyed up to eleven. The man drags his arm down his face and sighs, turning to look through the windows up at the sun, as though welcoming the eventual blindness he'd gain from it.

“It's a nice day.” Meyer wants to disagree, but he can smell the summer rolling off of the other man, and one never does know what will offend a Fae in-season, so he doesn't say a word. “Outside,” he adds, as though Meyer hadn't quite gotten it the first go around.

“If you say so,” Meyer says, before he can stop himself, and the other man  _ laughs,  _ rich and warm, and those blue, blue eyes meet his for a half-second before skittering away to rest on every other thing in the room. 

“You're a strange one, ain't you,” he says, something between warmth and wonder in his voice. It's too much. It's too kind. Meyer shrugs and turns away from both the man and the window. 

The light is too harsh for him, here.

They don't talk to each other during the meeting; mostly they let AR hash things out. He knows them both pretty well, and he knows their conditions and prices. All in all, it's about a half-waste of his time, and the only saving grace is the clinging smell of white flowers that follows him home. 

He smells it as he drifts off to sleep, and dreams of the blue-eyed man’s neck cracking between his teeth, thick, copper-jasmine blood coating his tongue and throat. He dreams of kissing him with red, red lips and running his hands over the fragile crests of his hip bones. 

He wakes gasping for air, smothered by flowers and blood. Sex and violence. Hot and cold. Red and white.

It should scare him, maybe.

* * *

There are three meetings between them before Charlie speaks to him again,  _ needles _ him, with smug smiles and teasing tone. 

“Lovely day, Mr. Lansky,” he says slyly, but his grin is sharp and white and wide, and Meyer's name half-whispers off his tongue like song and steel. The name is a tease, perhaps, a jab at Meyer’s superficial manners, but it tastes like flirtation in the back of his mouth. The feeling brings up a half-smile, the only kind Meyer gives anymore. 

It's involuntary, and more genuine than Meyer would like, and it makes Charlie’s smile smaller, softer.

It's a heavier moment than it could have been, Charlie's eyes locked fiercely on Meyer’s, his hands tapping a heartbeat staccato against the hardwood of AR’s couch, and Meyer’s skin  _ flushes _ with borrowed blood for the first time in a hundred years. 

“If you say so,” he replies, purposeful and fondly sly. The other man beams, the inside joke small, but growing.

“I do,” Charlie counters, without an ounce of heat. He'd even go so far as to call it cool. Smooth and almost practiced, like an offhand remark or an afterthought might be. 

It’s neither, but that's what makes it charming.

* * *

Meyer loves the cold. He loves it as most people do their dearest friends, their constant companions, their husbands and wives. It's been with him always, since the end of his life it's never left him. Clinging, twisting, wrapping into his bones like frost and ivy.

Meyer’s at his best in the winter, in the height of his power. He can track his prey halfway across the city with one footstep in the snow, can follow anyone anywhere once he hears their voice on the wind. He knows everything about you, once he's tasted your blood.

That part’s no magic, though, no supernatural gift. It's all Meyer. He knows who you are from your blood type, your skin and bone and blood flat out. Knows how you feel from the chemicals he finds. Serotonin tastes like carbonation and dark chocolate, testosterone like benzoin and smoke. Dopamine tastes like salt and smoke, and though some others he's met have tried to convince him that nothing is quite like a fizz of adrenaline and sharp fear on your tongue at midnight, he remains unconvinced. Meyer prefers it when they don't see him coming. 

Happy people, he sometimes muses, just taste  _ better. _

He knows what you eat, where you're from, whether you're sick or healthy. 

Whether you're in love.

Phenylethylamine, Meyer told Anna once, tastes like flower petals. Different for each person, but always like flowers. Like perfumed pastry, orange blossom macarons or rosewater eclairs. Elderflower cordials. Cherry blossom tarts. Sugar and the flesh of quick-dying blooms. She called it “indolic” and nodded. But indolic refers to dead flowers, rotting flowers, and that's not quite right- blood is life. Love is life. Together, they're more. He doesn't think she quite understood, but that's alright. He's not sure he does, either.

Meyer can follow a coin from his own hand to a hand across the city. He can trail it, trace it, follow it. He used to give pennies to kids he liked, street kids whose homes were little more than a blanket and an alley, to make sure that they stayed alive through the winter. He used to give them to people he felt nothing for, too, shiny dimes with silver torches on the back. He didn't give dimes for safety. He could follow bills, too, but it was less fun and more work- lots of politicians greasing palms and gangsters taking or giving bribes. It always turned into something businesslike, professional where the coins didn't. Something serious.

All this in the winter, though. In the cold. Meyer loves the cold, loves the late fall leaves and midwinter snow and early spring rains. It's where he's at his best.

Charlie's at his best when he's warm.

* * *

It's the first time Meyer thinks Charlie might mean something to him.

They're cutting down the Ghilvenis family, slitting throats and breaking necks and ending a criminal dynasty with a twitch of the hand. There are eighteen of them dead already- the mother, the father, two aunts, one uncle, one uncle by marriage, two daughters, six sons and four cousins. There's a miscommunication somewhere, though, because next thing Meyer knows, Charlie's lying on the ground, a long shard of glass buried in his side.

The Ghilvenis have seven sons.

The seventh son dies quickly, his throat torn clean out and his heart in Meyer’s hand.

Charlie doesn't see it happen, because he's bleeding out.

“You can't pull it out,” he babbles at Meyer, waving one limp hand. “Not unless you know how to stitch me up, doc.”

“Shut up, Luciano,” he scoffs, as though this means nothing. As though Charlie means nothing.

Meyer pulls out the glass. 

He stitches him back together, and he does not drink Charlie's blood. It's still a siren song of tiare and salt, copper and lily pollen, but there's no urge, no need more potent, more present than to keep him alive. It's violent, protective, fierce.

It scares Meyer.

He drops Charlie at a clinic Anna used to volunteer at, until she started to look too young for the age she'd given them.

Charlie’s a sound sleeper for a fae, even a deathly wounded one. He doesn't wake for three days and when he next sees Meyer he thanks him for dropping him off, all smiles and flickering eyes. 

Meyer keeps the glass.

* * *

Charlie doesn't need a coin because Meyer never has to track him. He already knows.

He's wherever Meyer is. 

Until he isn't, and his blood is all over Meyer’s car and the glass shard sticking wetly to Meyer’s passenger seat, and Meyer is driving as fast as any engine can possibly be pushed, and there's no way out of this now. Meyer’s unfocused and unsettled, and his fingers are going numb with how tightly they're clutching the steering wheel. He's not present, in the car. He's not really there.

He's wherever Charlie is.

Charlie, lying half-dead asleep in some clinic Meyer isn’t sure they can trust, looking delicate and mortal and dying. It burns in his throat, and he forces it down with the gas pedal.

Charlie is dangerous to him, and not in the usual ways Meyer is endangered.

* * *

Meyer used to be an assassin.

He used to give dimes to people, and somehow they'd never catch on, not even with his hands in their blood and their blood in his hair.

They're stupid, rich people are. In a good way, perhaps, for Meyer. Easy in their casual, unwavering, acceptance of the revolving of the world around them. It's soft and it's calm and it's stupid. It's arrogant.

You hand a businessman some change and he doesn't question it. Doesn't even wonder where it came from. 

Poor people ask. They count. They keep track. Meyer knows. Meyer hands nickels to panhandlers and quarters to people he loves, but the pennies are easily hidden for streetwalkers and changelings and those strange, lost souls who never misplace a gift from a vampire. 

Lost souls who need looking out for.

Charlie needs looking out for, but Meyer never gives him a coin on purpose. He doesn't need one. Never has.

He's from the Summer Court, Charlie is, from a world of light and warmth and dusk and death. But always heated and sharp like molten glass and white-hot metal. Always smiling. Always watching, even when he isn't. But so blunt, so heavy-handed with carelessness and quick temper that all his talent and soft voice are wasted. Charlie, when he can be persuaded, is soft sunshine and velvet, pleasure and graciousness and an edge of urgency. 

Meyer wishes he could persuade.

But Charlie’s a flare, flame and frustration bottled up and held- and he will not be held again. So he doesn’t make deals anymore, doesn’t negotiate and shake hands unless it’s over business. Doesn’t sell anything unless it can be taken or shot or drunk. But he could, Charlie knows. He could convince anyone to give him anything, if he wanted.

Meyer doesn't know how to do that. How to seduce instead of smother, entice instead of entrench. He is cold and clear-cut, like diamond or ice. He is compromise and negotiation, wars of words and winter’s bite in his voice. He can calm a storm or end a war, but never so easily or intuitively as Charlie could, if he tried. Charlie is so much more personable than him, and so much angrier, and it makes him bristle with insecurity and wonder.

He doesn't know how to be like Charlie because he's never known there was anyone like Charlie. 

He couldn't if he tried.

* * *

Anna is less than pleased with Meyer when he comes home covered in Charlie's blood.

* * *

Charlie never needs a coin because he's always taking money from Meyer anyway. 

He steals change from Meyer’s pockets and small bills from his wallet. 

He steals a hundred once, and Meyer has to convince him not to do it again with an elaborate scheme involving a black cat, three glasses of bathtub vodka, and enough salt to give Charlie grey hairs on more than just his head.

Charlie starts stealing his belongings instead.

He's not sure it's a fair trade.

* * *

Charlie takes Meyer to a casino one night and never again.

It’s a little bit work and a little bit not. AR had encouraged it, had told them to have some kind of ‘bonding’, to solidify their camaraderie. He was almost enthusiastic about it, which is about half of what made Meyer agree. AR doesn’t get enthusiastic about much, not as long as Meyer’s known him. But this friendship seems to engender a kind of gratuitous happiness in AR, small and firm as it may be. Truthfully, Meyer sometimes wonders if AR remembers what friendship is.

Meyer does.

The casino is a dimly-lit place, a basement of a basement, deep and dark and smoke-filled. There seem to be tulips and roses unfolding from the walls, ferns and grasses carpet the floor and tether furniture to it. Charlie nods distantly, if fondly, to the man running it, whose eyes flicker like fireflies and whose grin is half-jagged with feral greed.

“O’Banion,” Charlie murmurs in explanation, leading Meyer further into the haze. “Dean. He runs the place. And everyone in it.” There’s a half-laugh in that, like memory. 

“Irish?” As if he has to ask, name like that.

“Born and bred,” Charlie agrees. “But he’s fae, so he’s near enough to be trusted by-” he pauses, consciously weighing his words. “Well, by the Boss, I s’pose. And that’s enough for them.”

“Not you?” Meyer asks. Charlie stops, like a long pause held for breath.

“I trust him ‘cause of me. Not anyone else.” There’s anger, there, bone-deep and bone-solid. “I think for myself.” It’s sharp, like a reprimand, but Meyer isn’t entirely sure who Charlie’s angry with. He knows, somehow, it isn’t him. 

“If you say so,” he murmurs, a soft smile in his voice, and Charlie breaks free to laugh.

“I do,” he says, conviction and warmth suffusing every part of him. He relaxes, just a little, and Meyer begins to wonder if maybe that was why Charlie had brought him. The casino should be relaxing, lulling him to carelessness. It’s full to brimming with Sicilians, and Italians, and Fae. Charlie’s people, Charlie’s world, and yet he’s never looked so uncomfortable, so on guard.

So afraid.

It’s the first clue Meyer has as to how the night might go, because he’s never seen Charlie scared before. Unsettled, angry, yes. Definitely angry, but never afraid. 

There’s a man, seated comfortably, confidently in the corner booth. There are two small, pretty women framing him, each looking a strange mix of uncomfortable and blissful. There are two men across from him, and Meyer could swear half the smoke in the place is coming from them. 

“Lucky,” the man himself purrs, and Charlie is immediately on alert. 

“Joe,” he replies crisply, respectfully. Resentfully.

“I knew you’d show up eventually. Leave those dispassionate bloodsuckers and unreliable thieves for your own kind.” He grins, and there’s something ugly in his smile. “They always do.”

“I hate to burst your bubble,” Charlie says flatly, “but I’m happy where I am.”

“For now, perhaps,” the man still smiles, placing his large hand on Charlie’s smaller, ignoring, or expecting, the jolt, the twitch that Charlie shivers away. Meyer takes half a step forward, but Charlie’s minute shake of his head stops him.

“For as long as I say,” he corrects the man, tension built to crashing between them. He pulls his hand away, and stands. The man keeps laughing, lets Charlie stride away, Meyer following like a wraith. 

They make their way to the bar, and Charlie downs three tiny glasses of something floral and sharp.

“I hate this,” he hisses through grit teeth. “I hate all of it.”

“Then why come?” Meyer asks, leaning against the bar, watching the crowds move and the door open and close. 

“Because I have to,” he mutters, so low Meyer thinks maybe he’s not supposed to hear.

“Lucky!” Someone yells, and a man with golden eyes hugs Charlie with unprecedented enthusiasm.

“Hey,” Charlie replies, mustering a half-grin that’s more grim than sincere. The man looks between Meyer and Charlie a few times before coming to some kind of conclusion.

“Chi e la sanguisuga?” The man asks Charlie, and he’s not grinning anymore, and his hand’s resting heavily on his shoulder. Like a weight, Meyer thinks.

“Tu,” Charlie replies coldly, shrugging off the hand like he’s never wanted anything more than to get away. “Come on,” he snaps at Meyer, who raises one eyebrow in response… and follows.

Charlie doesn’t do commands, so to speak.

Fae are subject to those who Bind them, those who know their True Names, who can claim their souls for their own. Meyer had never thought about it before Charlie. What that must be like, to live in fear forever, to hold the truest part of yourself always and alone in your heart. What it must be like to lie every moment, every breath. To fear every command for the threat it carries of permanence, of unbreakable servitude. Charlie asks him to do things, tells him, maybe, in that half-apathetic, half-irritated fashion that makes Meyer want to strangle him and kiss him at the same time. But he never commands Meyer, never orders him to do something. Never takes away Meyer’s choice.

“Come,” Charlie calls. 

Meyer comes.

It doesn’t shame him the way it would if anyone else had done it, and that lights a bright spark of anger in him. He quells it. But the impression of it stays.

“Was that about me?” Meyer asks blandly, because there was no way it wasn’t. Charlie has a hand wrapped like a cuff around his wrist, leading him deeper and deeper into the crowd.

“Why d’you ask?” Charlie asks, to avoid answering. They come out in some sort of garden, an ice-cold cavern hollowed out under the casino, and Meyer immediately feels more at home. There’s a pool, and the eerie waves bounce blue light around the walls and ceiling. They keep moving, bobbing and weaving between people, drinking and dancing and drugging themselves blind.

“I’m afraid ‘sanguine’ means just about the same thing in every romance language,” Meyer replies flatly, following in Charlie’s wake. His pace is quick, like he’s running away, but Meyer is quick, too, and he matches it effortlessly.

“Fuck,” Charlie sighs, stopping. He rubs one hand over his face, curling long fingers around his chin, breathing heavy. His breath mists in the air like fog. Like smoke. His hand slips from his face, his other hand still wrapped around Meyer’s wrist. More loosely, now, like he wants it, but doesn’t want to ask. “I’m sorry,” he says finally, still looking away from Meyer.

“What for,” Meyer asks, pulling his wrist back gently. Charlie lets him go reluctantly. “Charlie.”

“I just-” he breaks off, huffing, still frustrated, still tense. His hands swing restlessly by his sides.

“Why did you bring me here?” Meyer asks, and his calm is fading. He wanted to come. He wanted to come.

Charlie had wanted him to come.

Why?

“I guess I just wanted to prove something,” Charlie says, sliding his hands into his pockets. “To them. To me.” He steps to the edge of the pool, standing on the very edge. “And I used you to do it.” Charlie shrugs, and laughs a mocking laugh. “So, sorry I guess.” He looks sad and afraid, like he’s about to plunge forward into the blue depths and never return. He looks bittersweet, his shoulders hunched and stray curls of his black, black hair hanging in front of those beautiful, uncertain eyes. Meyer wants to kiss him. Meyer wants to kill him.

“Go to hell,” Meyer says, quietly. Almost politely.

Almost.

He walks out, swift strides carrying him with dignity and evenness to the door. 

He wanted to come.

AR is confused, and maybe a little put out when they come in the next day less cohesive than before. Less trusting. But he doesn’t ask, and Meyer would thank him for it if that wouldn’t make him ask.

Charlie doesn’t try to apologize again. Not where Meyer can hear him, anyway, because Anna tells him he’s come around a few times and tried to talk to her.

She doesn’t tell him he has.

* * *

The season turns, and Meyer’s power grows along with his frustration.

Autumn creeps into winter with a long shadow and a silver wind, sweeping away all the warmth of Charlie’s season. There’s ice on every road and snow on every drive, and Meyer smiles more often than he used to.

Charlie still won’t look him in the eye.

Meyer minds, but he isn’t sure why.

Meyer is unsure of many things, these days.

* * *

“AR said he was good for the job, and he is,” Meyer says, and he fidgets with the shard of glass he'd pulled from Charlie's side. It rests on his mantel, jagged and cold, like ice that never melts. It used to be bloody. 

It isn't bloody now. 

Meyer has never so much wanted to devour someone and save their life at the same time. Jasmine and orange blossoms drift on the wind, and he  _ wants _ .

“Since when have you trusted AR?” Anna asks, slamming things around. “You haven't trusted him since he sent you those nine brothers.”

“Hm,” he hums, and she knows there's no answer there. When there's trouble, Meyer tends to speak in platitudes, in quips, in words meant to smooth over situations he didn't get anyone into but somehow is forced to get them out of. When things are going well, he doesn’t do much talking. But this time there is something to say, something worth saying. Something vital and bright and full-formed in his chest, bursting to be said.

And he refuses to say it.

“What are you doing, Meyer?” She asks flatly, holding out the glass of wine like it was a sword rather than a drink. He takes it. Her frown deepens, like she'd rather he didn't. She worries, he knows. She's known him a long time, and when he stops talking, she starts to fuss. Starts to stress about the things he doesn't say, things kept locked behind sharp white teeth and the iron set of his jaw. 

“I don't know,” he replies finally, downing the glass in one go. 

It's a lie. 

He knows there's a storm coming, a sharp, swelling mass of torment and fury, some of it his, but he can't say that to her.

“Thanks for the drink,” he says absentmindedly, and Anna rolls her eyes.

It's only later that he finds out Charlie gave her the wine.

* * *

The man Charlie was avoiding at the casino calls him again, and Meyer shadows him. He’s curious, quiet. He wants to know what has Charlie, bright, slick, untameable Charlie, so very afraid. 

The man looks at Charlie like he's food. Like he's prey. 

It rankles at Meyer, because Charlie is a hunter, a devourer and artist of temptation and a killer of men. Charlie is nobody's prey.

Least of all  _ his _ .

He's glad the man is greedy, because when he takes Meyer’s dime from off the table, thinking it’s spare change, it's only a few minutes until he's taking a back road to a dark street. 

His name is Masseria. Joe Masseria. He touches Charlie’s hands, and he makes him afraid, and Meyer wants him dead more than anyone he’s ever met.

There’s something insidious about him. Something poisonous and broken-off and leaking.

He doesn’t want it anywhere near Charlie, sharp and smooth and sly Charlie.

He makes a decision.

* * *

“Come to kill me?” Charlie jokes when he opens his door to Meyer standing on his stoop.

“Not quite,” Meyer responds mildly.

“Then what?” Charlie asks, and Meyer smiles. He does something impulsive. Something Charlie would do.

“Well,” Meyer says, and then he kisses Charlie. 

* * *

Meyer wakes to Charlie’s arms wrapped around him. His hands are hot, unpleasantly so, and Meyer tries carefully to wriggle out his grasp. He almost manages it, but when he tries to creep away, he feels a pull at his arm.

“Stay with me,” Charlie murmurs, one strong hand dangling from Meyer’s sleeve. His fingers, thin and strong, clasp around the crux of Meyer’s wrist. Echoes of blue water and smoke fill his mind, and he flinches away. It's not a command. Not a deal. Charlie’s too tired, too soft with sleep to be consciously dealing with Meyer. 

But even as words alone, it terrifies him. It strikes to the heart of him and burns away his rationality. Because he ins't Charlie. he doesn't do impulsive things.

He wants to stay. He does. But to do so would tangle things up, make them fraught with feelings and actions and words, and Meyer doesn't know if he could manage that with Charlie. He doesn’t know if Charlie could manage it with him. He doesn't know what it would mean if he could. So he pries Charlie's fingers from his wrist and places his hand gently on the mattress beside his face. 

He doesn't promise to stay, doesn't whisper any words which could be taken as law, taken as love.

He shoulders his heavy wool coat, ties his black leather shoes. He settles small masks back into their places and realigns his walls. He makes his way down Charlie's steps slowly, carefully. To show he can.

He walks away.

* * *

AR sends them out three days later.

This time, it’s Meyer who can’t look Charlie in the eye.

* * *

They’re caught, and this Thompson guy holds a gun to Meyer’s head and Jimmy has him dig his own grave. He does. They crack jokes about how Meyer must be getting homesick for his coffin. He rolls his eyes.

It’s when they threaten Charlie that he sees red. It comes too soon on the heels of his leaving, too close to Masseria’s possessive stare and merciless smile. He sees red until it floods his eyes and mind and ears.

And then they all see red, because that’s all that’s left.

* * *

Meyer is beautiful in his lethality. He spins and slashes and tears and devours until all that's left is the sense memory of his movement and the overwhelming scent of blood. Charlie is breathing hard himself by the time Meyer is done, and it's not from exertion. He's beautiful. Truly. He moves like time itself cannot stand before him, as though there is no obstacle but his own initiative and his self-control. And perhaps there is not.

He stops, his eyes fixed on Charlie like he wants to possess him, devour him.

Hunt him. 

Charlie wants to be afraid.

He isn’t. 

Then Meyer looks down, past the blood of his enemies to the long, deep gash in his side, like something too a bite out of him. He collapses, blood spilling fast, too fast, and Charlie is so afraid.

He’s terrified.

* * *

“Drink me.” Charlie's voice is so quiet under the thrumming of Meyer’s pulse in his head that he almost misses it.

“What?” Meyer’s head is spinning, his limbs are going numb. Why? He can't quite understand what's happening, or why. Why? But then he looks at Charlie, quick, soft Charlie, covered in blood and looking at him like he has no idea what to do, and he  _ knows _ . It's sudden, cold and sharp. Clinically, cleanly, his mind cuts to the end result. Vampires who lose this much blood don't usually live long lives.

He's dying. 

He knows dying, he's done it before. It feels like this, too, from what he can remember, feels like nothing and everything all at once. 

“You need blood,” Charlie says, and he's undoing his jacket, stripping it off hastily. Meyer is mesmerized as he pulls his tie away from his neck. 

“This is my favor,” Charlie says, and he's frantic and desperate and Meyer wonders why. He's scrabbling, grasping at Meyer’s own jacket, covered in blood, both the dead men’s and his own. He's afraid. “This is my favor, damn you, you owe me this,” he's almost crying now, and Meyer wants him to stop. Charlie should never cry for him, he thinks. 

“Stop,” Meyer slurs, one shaking hand tangling in Charlie’s half-open shirt. Charlie stops, gaping mouth and flickering blue eyes fixed on Meyer. On the blood dripping from his mouth, the wounds still open in his chest.

“No,” Charlie says, and it's a whisper of power and fear. “No.” He grasps Meyer by the chin. “You selfish bastard,” he spits, pulling him in to press a harsh, desperate kiss to the side of Meyer’s mouth. “I gave you a drink.  _ I gave you a drink. _ ” He repeats it, as if trying to impress something into Meyer’s dying mind. “So now you owe me. A drink for a drink.” He presses his face into Meyer’s shoulder, baring his neck to the vampire. Meyer can smell it, like moonflowers and red wine- the wine Charlie  _ gave _ him- flowing fast under strong, mouthwatering skin. It's no longer a yearning, what he feels for Charlie and his blood. It's a need, a compulsion, as if there is nothing more important in the world than taking Charlie’s throat between his teeth and  _ drinking _ .

“No,” Meyer murmurs, pushing feebly at his chest. “Charlie.”

“ _ Drink. Me. _ ” Charlie hisses, taking a shard of glass from the ground and slashing it unevenly across the side of his neck. 

The blood sprays. 

It covers the side of his face, and he breathes it in like perfume- plumeria and copper and life. Meyer’s mouth is still open, and it's wet now, and redder, blood dripping from the corners and from between his teeth.

He cannot hold it in.

He grasps Charlie’s shirt, just between the collar and the buttons, soft, worn fabric fisted in his fingers and bleeding out between. For a single, eternal, second, he can see the desperation in Charlie's eyes, the fear and pain and hope.

And then he sees only  _ prey _ , quickly corrected to  _ equal _ and  _ mine _ and feels only need.

Meyer’s fangs sink deep to the flesh of Charlie’s neck, to the soft, enclosed parts of him. It's almost like being exposed. Like his skin is being peeled away and all that's left is blood and bone and soul. 

All that's left is Charlie and Meyer and Charlie’s blood flowing into his mouth like water from a stream. It's sweet and floral, warm and wet and so deeply Charlie, so much an integral part of him that Meyer can't get enough. He bites and bites again, drinks deep and long. He drinks Charlie away, and breathes in deep through his nose so he can keep going. 

Charlie's heart beats so fast, so steady, even as Meyer drinks his very life from his veins. It's soothing, an even, urgent rhythm that fills Meyer’s ears and pushes him on. It hammers, resting rate the same as any normal human’s might be before they die of pure fright.

It's so calming, slowing beat by beat until it's infrequent. So slow… so steady, like a drumbeat, marching them together into a red fog. Meyer’s dying, and now Charlie's dying, too, and they'll fade. They'll fade together.

Meyer stops.

Meyer pulls away and presses shaking hands to the gaping wounds on Charlie’s neck. He's gasping, still swallowing the blood in his mouth, licking it from his teeth and lips, aching for more. But Charlie's gasping too, blood trickling from his throat and mouth and his eyes wide and empty.

“Please,” Meyer grits out, pressing harder on the mess he'd made of Charlie's neck, as if he could keep the blood from spilling with sheer force of will. “Charlie, please.”

“Salvatore,” a choked, gurgling rasp comes from between Meyer’s hands. “My name is Salvatore, you bastard.”

Meyer cries into Charlie’s bloody chest, hands pressed so tight around his neck it's a wonder he can breathe.

* * *

 

The marks stay for days. They’ll stay for years.

Vampires don't bite with neat little pinpricks. They sink all their teeth in, gouging, making valleys for the blood to gather and well up. Making lakes from which to drink. They don't often leave victims alive, and even more rarely do they leave them unturned. Charlie’s neck is more than torn, it's savaged, and Meyer can see the imprint of his mouth on every scar. The sharp edge of his teeth here, the deep punctures of his canines there.

He feels disgust and pride twist in his stomach, and he breathes slowly to calm himself. 

“Salvatore, Salvatore, Salvatore,” Meyer murmurs, like a reminder. Like a prayer. He says it each time his fingers stray to Charlie’s neck, his hair, his eyelids. All the soft, tired parts of him are revered and loved under Meyer’s touch. His true name whispered without compulsion or direction, no orders given or actions forced. Only a strange gratitude and soft love. All his scars and wounds are traced and smiled at, cool fingers tracing Hebrew into his skin.

Especially the scars Meyer himself has made.

Meyer presses cold kisses to the tender, torn skin on Charlie’s throat, gentle and possessive. There's something smug in the turn of his mouth, prideful and sharp, battling with the dim regret festering in the back of his mind. Charlie takes one look at the tense set of his eyes and pulls him up so they're face to face.

“Call ‘em love bites,” Charlie murmurs into his lips, tangling a strong, deft hand in Meyer’s perfect hair. Ruffling it, unsettling it. 

Making a mark.

* * *

There's something heavy about summer, Meyer thinks, Charlie's long arms tangled around his waist, his sharp nose pressing hotly into Meyer’s shoulder. There is something suffocating, like being choked by flowers. It's like having honeysuckle vines twined around his neck, he thinks, like magnolia petals covering his nose and mouth. Like white roses between his teeth, petals crushed and stem cracked under his canines. Thorns digging into the soft parts of his mouth and drowning him in his own blood. Choking him on rosewater and copper.

There are worse ways to die, he thinks, and turns his head to breathe in deep lungfuls of the white flower scent in Charlie’s hair. 

He's died before.

He wakes up alone.

* * *

He looks for Charlie. He looks everywhere, panic swelling like bile in his throat.

Not now. He can’t lose him now.

When he does find Charlie, it’s worse. It’s so much worse.

* * *

Masseria has chained Charlie, bound him and trapped him with his Name, but he’s never seemed more feral, more fearsome.

He slams Meyer into the alley wall, pressing him to the cold stone with fierce venom and fear.

“You told him,” Charlie hisses, desperate shaking fingers curled in Meyer’s coat, a twisted mirror of the last time they were in a situation like this. “ _ You  _ told  _ him _ .”

“I swear, I  _ swear  _ I didn’t,” Meyer insists, because he didn’t. He wouldn’t. He wraps one gentle hand around Charlie’s, and he’s fever-hot and unsteady. Meyer wants to wrap him in his arms and curl so far around him that nobody will ever find him again.

“You did!” Charlie is weeping now, his grip weak and tangled in Meyer’s coat, his eyes ringed with deep violet. “It had to be you!”

“I would never,” he promises, solemn and honest, his own hands steadying Charlie, pulling him closer.

“I only told  _ you _ !” Charlie cries, and he’s sobbing now, shaking Meyer forward with the intensity of his fury. “So it had to be you!”

“It wasn’t me. Charlie, I never told anyone.” Meyer doesn’t know what else he can say. There’s nothing else to say. “I never told him.”

There’s no one else to blame.

“Then you told someone, and they told him.” Charlie’s eyes are dead, lightless, and it’s like dying. Dying again, and again, and it’s always Charlie. “You’ve killed me.” Stepping backwards, rain-wet and fever-bright, ash grey and ink black. He turns away.

“Charlie,” Meyer calls, desperate. “Salvatore-” he tries, and it's the worst thing he could have done.

“ _ Never _ ,” Charlie spits, spinning around. “ **_Never_ ** call me by that name again.”

It's binding. He's not asking. He is Commanding, and it burns. It's cold.

He leaves Meyer slumped against the wall, sliding down to sit on the cold, hard, ground. 

Meyer weeps, then, alone.

He breaks.

* * *

Masseria had someone following them.

He had someone tell him Charlie's true name. Had someone follow them everywhere, listening to everything they said, everything they did. Watching. Listening. The knowledge reignites his fury, and he begins again.

It takes Meyer two months to find Charlie again, to find Masseria and even begin to think of killing him. 

It’s faster than it should be, Masseria’s death.

* * *

“Sorry,” Meyer tells Charlie, strung up by his hands and dangling. “I meant to save you. Fuck.” He grimaces, flexing his hands. “I’m sorry.”

“Why come,” Charlie asks, and there’s anger and sadness mingled in his face. His fists clench and unclench. “When you’re the one who put me here?”

“Because I didn’t,” and this may be the last conversation they ever have, he ever has, and he wants to tell the truth. “Because I love you.”

Charlie freezes, eyes wide and empty.

“I’m sorry, Charlie.” Meyer says, and he smiles. Masseria snaps his fingers, calling Charlie like a dog. Meyer bristles at that and when Charlie sinks to his knees, when he bows his head in despair and beaten-down obedience, when Masseria’s hand ruffles that black, black hair, when he coos out something sickening and demeaning in the language Charlie's only taught him scraps of, something in Meyer snaps.

Like before. Like before, but worse. There is an almost physical sensation of the temperature dropping, frost climbing the walls and ice spreading across the floor. Meyer sees white, then red.

The rope freezes solid. 

_Masseria_ freezes solid.

He’s not all gone, though, and Charlie drags a knife through the bond line on Masseria’s wrist, severing it. Freeing himself. 

He drives the knife into Masseria’s heart, slow and steady and longing, like this is something he’s wanted for years.

“Go to hell,” Charlie spits at Masseria, still gasping for breath, ice-blue and wide-eyed like a fish. “And stay there.”

Meyer watches Charlie watch him die. Charlie stays, eyes empty and knife hanging loosely from his hand. Meyer looks to the setting sun. 

There is nothing left to be done.

He walks away.

* * *

 

He sees it sometimes, in the warm, soft space behind Charlie’s eyes. He wants to take it back. He won't though, he can't, and so the words stay trapped and broken in his mouth, like broken glass under his tongue.

“Charlie,” Meyer will call, and he’ll look up, something lurking in those blue, blue eyes. He’ll open his mouth to say  _ call me Salvatore, please _ , and then it’ll close up, the words grinding his throat bloody with his own forbiddance.

It only hurts them both, so Meyer stops calling. 

There is something to say.

He cannot say it.

* * *

In the end, it’s the kidnapping that does it.

Charlie is taken again, thrown into a car and beaten, stabbed and scarred and left to die.

Meyer cannot leave him. Not like last time.

* * *

 

He pieces him back together, stitches him up and cleans his wounds and gives him his bed.

In the middle of the night, he’s brought in by Charlie’s hoarse shouts. 

“Tell me you’re real,” he gasps, clutching at Meyer’s arms. “Please. Please. Meyer-”

“Hush. Hush, Charlie,” Meyer whispers, pressing soft, small kisses to the scar still forming across his eye.

“Salvatore,” he asks. Pleads. “Please. Please, Meyer.”

“I can’t,” Meyer says, more regret than bitterness, and pulls away, the sting of past mistakes burning them both.

“Do you want to?” Charlie asks, quietly. There’s hope in his voice, and though he lies still on the bed, as though to move would be to disturb the peace, his fingers twitch fast. Meyer stops where he’d been ready to stand, sinks back down to wrap one hand under Charlie’s chin, to lift it and press a kiss to his jaw.

“Always,” Meyer responds, one finger tracing the scars he gave Charlie, soothing and familiar. “But there are things even I can’t undo.”

The words are not meant to hurt, but they do. Charlie’s fists curl where they lie, and when Meyer sneaks a look at his face it’s twisted with shame and regret, pain and frustration. He pushes his face into the crook of Charlie’s shoulder so he doesn’t have to see.

“I should have trusted you,” he whispers. “Then.” The darkness cloaks them, the weight of their conversation forcing them to whisper as though there’s anyone to hear.

“And why should you do that,” Meyer whispers back, face buried in Charlie’s neck. “When you knew I was the only one. When you knew it was impossible to trust me.”

“Because I love you,” Charlie whispers, and it’s the first crack of ice. The first breaking glass, the first snap of wood.

It’s breaking and being and glory, glory, halle-fucking-lujah.

“I love you,” Meyer says in return, earnest and solemn and small.

“Never stop,” Charlie asks, and it’s a knife to his heart. The good kind.

“If you say so,  _ Salvatore _ ,” Meyer replies, so quietly he thinks Charlie might not have heard him.

“I do,” he says, and his hands tangle in Meyer’s hair like safety. Jasmine and copper and warm, strong hands. Like benediction. Like death.

He’s died before.

This is better.

* * *

 

_ Si fino all'ore estreme, compagna tua m'avrai _

"Yes, you will have me as your friend until your last hour; the world is large enough to be a shelter to both of us together."   


-Cabaletta: Duet, Norma and Adalgisa

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. has anyone found a sicilian->english and vice versa translator bc i could not so it's just "speaks sicilian" okay
> 
> 1.5. (also omg have i mentioned that the "drink me" scene and the one right after are maybe my favorite things i've ever written???? because thEY ARE)
> 
> help its 1 am and i have work tomorrow kjafkjfg[aengaer


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